This is Jessica Ortner, and I’m thrilled to welcome you to this special Tapping World Summit bonus. We had the great pleasure and opportunity to interview Joe Vitale in 2007 for our film, The Tapping Solution. We found Joe so incredibly insightful that we wanted to share this entire audio with you. Enjoy.

Joe Vitale:

I’m Joe Vitale. I’m primarily an author. I’m known as an internet marketer. These days, I’ve become something of a spiritual teacher because I’m in the movie The Secret, and I’ve written some spiritually oriented books, self-help books like The Attractor Factor, Life’s Missing Instruction Manual. I have a book coming out later this month called Zero Limits. And another one coming out later called, The Key…The Missing Secret to Attracting Whatever You Want.

So first and foremost, I’m an author.

Jessica Ortner: Who first introduced you to EFT?

Joe Vitale: I learned about EFT before it was called EFT. It was called Thought Field Therapy, and I learned it from Roger Callahan. I did not know about energy psychology. I did not know about Thought Field Therapy. I did not know about EFT.

What I was looking for was a cure to speaking phobia, speaking anxiety. I had a fear of speaking and here I was being asked to speak a tremendous amount, and every time I did, it was panic attack-ville. So I was looking, where is the cure for this?

And one time I was on a flight and I saw an ad for a course that said, “I can teach you to stop having the fear of speaking in 5 minutes or less.” And it was for a course by Roger Callahan. So Roger Callahan was my introduction to what eventually became EFT.

Jessica Ortner: And what was your first reaction when you learned it?

Joe Vitale: Well, when I first learned about EFT, Thought Field Therapy through Roger Callahan and I learned that he was talking on tapping on different points on your body, I think I was sceptical. But I was also desperate. I had known enough about acupuncture and Chinese Medicine to know that there was probably some factual background to what he was talking about, but the reality was that I was sceptical. But I was reaching for whatever was going to help me. I didn’t want to take medication. I didn’t want to stop speaking. I wanted to go out there and get my message into the world, and I was looking for some sort of positive, healthy, easy to do, easy to use, easy to remember tool.

So I was sceptical, but open-minded enough to try it.

Jessica Ortner: And how were the results for you?

Joe Vitale: The results were just short of phenomenal. I was amazed that by tapping on different parts of my body that my body would relax… that I could actually feel it shift. And I thought, “This is a little weird.” Like, why is this happening? And if I tapped on a different part of the body, would it still happen the same way? I was beginning to think that maybe it was the placebo effect.

Maybe it was working because I was believing that it would work or I needed it to work or I just desperately wanted it to work. And the reality was that it worked when I did it the way he was describing it.

Now, over time, I learned from EFT and I learned from my own use of this process of using energy psychology that I could create my own shortcuts to it.

But I basically had to follow what he was teaching me to begin with and when I did, boy… I’ve gone out and given some zingers of speeches. I’ve gone out and won awards for my talks. I’ve had people say, “My God, how did you learn to speak like that?” And I was just like, “I’m just tapping away the problems… (laughing) and going out and doing it.”

Jessica Ortner: That’s great. What did you find, what do you feel is the biggest difference between TFT and EFT?

Joe Vitale: I think EFT is far simpler. I saw that with Roger Callahan and bless him, he’s still doing his stuff. I love him. If he comes out with new books, I’m buying them. I just really worship what he’s doing.

But there was a little bit of a complicated method to it. And he had you doing things like humming and singing “Happy Birthday” to yourself, and various points in this whole elaborate structure that he wanted you to follow. I followed all of that, but over time, I was learning on my own that I didn’t have to do all of it. I had to do some essential things.

So I found that EFT was making the same discovery. EFT was finding out that you don’t have to do all of what is being prescribed in Thought Field Therapy, you can actually do this shorter version of it and have very, pinpointed, dramatic results.

Jessica Ortner: You were just mentioning me before that you’ve started to incorporate EFT into business. Do you have a testimonial or a story of someone who got the best result with EFT?

Joe Vitale: Well, let’s see… Brad Yates, who is an EFT Master Practitioner – he and I put on a teleseminar together which we recorded and is now online as a digital product that people can listen to or download. And it’s called Money Beyond Belief, and it’s at

http://moneybeyondbelief.com

And what we did was look at all the beliefs that people have about money. Most of them which we’re not aware of and some of which we are aware of and we don’t know how to get rid of.

So there were a lot of people who went on those calls that were able to manifest money in their lives right afterwards or manifest things like they wanted a new car, or they wanted to get a new house.

And what was interesting was that they thought the outer world was blocking them from getting the results they wanted. It wasn’t the outer world at all. It was the inner world. And as they were doing the tapping to remove those inner blocks, suddenly there wasn’t anything in the way of them attracting money.

There was one woman who needed to get a lot of money quick. She ended up receiving $50,000, and I really believe it was literally overnight – in the most magical way – because somebody called who owed her $45,000 and then with interest it was $50,000. But she made $50,000 over night.

Now, the day before, she had no way of knowing how she would get any money. She was totally blocked about deservingness. She was totally blocked about where would the money come from, that it only comes from one route, my job or some bank interest, or some savings account, or you win the lottery. That’s very limited thinking. But by doing the tapping, she dissolved those blocks.

She dissolved the limitation and she raised her level of deservingness, and the next day… call it a miracle, call it magic, call it whatever you want to call it, she had $50,000.

Jessica Ortner: A lot of people who are watching, who are learning about the law of attraction, who are watching The Secret, sometimes feel that they can’t talk about those certain emotions because they’re going to be attracting them, and that’s a big part of EFT. So can you kind of explain to them how that works in regards to the law of attraction?

Joe Vitale: A lot of people watched the movie The Secret and they hear about the law of attraction and then they also hear about EFT, tapping your troubles away and so forth.

· And they’re afraid to go and state what the block is within them.
· They’re afraid to state the limiting belief.
· They’re afraid to state whatever it is that the actual block that’s keeping them from attracting what they want.
· And they’re afraid to state it because they think, “If I state what the belief is or the block is, I’m going to attract it.” That is a limiting belief in itself.

What I’ve found is that when you state the limiting belief like, “I’m not good enough.” “I’m afraid.” “I don’t know where money’s going to come from.” “I don’t know if my business is going to succeed.” I mean, there are all kind of beliefs that are unique to the person. When you state that, you’re not anchoring the belief. You are releasing the belief. This is key to understanding how the law of attraction works.

When I sit here, and this is what I did before the cameras came and started rolling today… I was thinking to myself, “I don’t know what I’m going to say.” “I’m not an expert on energy psychology. I certainly use EFT in my own life.” So I sat here and said, “Even though I don’t know what to say about energy psychology, I deeply love, accept and forgive myself. Even though I don’t know…”

And I went through the whole process on what was coming up in me.

Now that didn’t mean that I was anchoring in my body the idea that I don’t know what to say. I wasn’t attracting that. What I was doing was releasing it so that by the time you came here and you turned on the camera, I can talk and what I have to say just comes because the barriers to it are now gone. EFT dissolves the blocks to attracting what you want.

Jessica Ortner: What does money have to do with the energetic body?

Joe Vitale: It’s important to understand that money is just energy itself. We infuse it with all sort of power and all sort of meaning, but it’s really… It’s paper. It’s metal. It’s coin. In many ways, it’s worthless. And that may sound shocking if you don’t have any money because you truly want that worthless paper and coin in your life. But what I’ve learned is that it’s simply energy. And what keeps it from coming to us is our own beliefs about it. And this is what I teach in my seminars and in my own work as an entrepreneur that really the way to earn money is out there.

The information is out there. I mean, we’re in an office. We’re surrounded by information.

There’s no shortage of that. What’s very shortage of is the persons themselves being clear about their deservingness about money. When they clean their own energy system, I’m talking about the beliefs in their unconscious mind. I’m talking about the beliefs in their conscious mind. When they are in alignment to receive money, then it just comes into their lives.

It’s all energy. The body is an energy. The feelings you have about money are energy. Money itself is just energy. So when all of this is in alignment, money just comes. And money needs to be circulated so that as money comes into you, you go ahead and spend it. More money comes in to you, you go ahead and spend it. You have a natural flow. The only thing that interrupts that flow is you and your beliefs. And the tapping helps erase the negative limiting beliefs.

There are a lot of limiting beliefs about money and some of the most common ones are things like:

“Money is evil.”
“Rich people are bad.”
“If I have a whole lot of money, people are going to come and feed off of me… my family, my friends, complete strangers are going to come.”
“When you make a whole lot of money, taxes come and just take it away from you.”

These are beliefs. They are not facts. And it’s important to realize that these are just thoughts you’ve infused with your own energy. As you release them, you allow money to come into your life.

Money, again, is neutral. Money is not bad. What you do with it is up to you. And it can be used for positive or negative reasons depending on how you view this. Rich people can be some of the most wonderful, beneficial, positive, influential people in the entire planet. Again, that’s all your choice. So thinking that money is bad or rich people are bad or your lifestyle is going to be one where you’re just wasting money… all of those are limiting beliefs. Change them and you allow money to come into your life.

Jessica Ortner: Besides using EFT to let go of limiting beliefs, have you yourself ever known anyone who used it towards a goal?

Joe Vitale: I use EFT on a lot of different things. Of course, I started with public speaking anxiety and then I’ve used it for money issues, deservingness issues, self-esteem issues, all within me. And then of course, I’ve used it to lose a lot of weight. And a lot of people don’t know that you can use it on virtually everything and anything.

I wanted to lose weight about, I fought with obesity for 50 years, and about 3 years ago, I decided I was doing something about it and I’d entered some courses. I went into some fitness contests. I ended up losing 80 pounds, being in 6 fitness contests, working out with a world-famous body builder, building my own gym in the back, literally working out almost every day now, having a personal trainer come out once a week – usually on Saturdays to work out with me…

And in the beginning, it wasn’t like this. In the beginning, I was struggling with boy, do I want the cheesecake or the carrot cake… or I want the second helping… or I want to hit the buffet today… and I realized that there was a lot of eating for emotional reason. So I was using EFT, the tapping, on that. “Even though I want the second piece of cheesecake right now…” or, “I want to go eat all of the carrot cake right now… I deeply love and accept and forgive myself.” And going through the whole tapping mechanism to bring myself to a state of peace.

And this is really important because a lot of eating is just emotional eating. A lot of overeating is emotional eating. And if you can realize that you have a belief that is driving you, it’s often stress. And you can just release it by tapping it away, you are then at a point of choice. You’re not driven by the addiction. Now you’re on top of it. And that’s what I was doing to help lose 80-some pounds.

Jessica Ortner: That’s great. What do you think is the – and this might have to do with EFT or not – but what do you think is the biggest contributor to your success?

Joe Vitale: I’m often asked, what is the biggest reason for me having the level of success that I do, and the first thing that I want to back up and say is that a lot of people don’t know that I came from homelessness at one point, thirty-some years ago.

I was in poverty for over 10 years. I was a struggling author, struggling speaker. I was depressed, suicidal, unhappy… living in a state of desperation. So for me to go from that 30-some years ago to go to… I have a bit of an internet celebrity status. I’m in the movie that’s making me pretty well known, The Secret. I’ve been on CNN’s Larry King twice. I have more books out there than I can count. The Attractor Factor for example has been a best seller numerous times, being translated into different languages. I have people coming to me wanting to turn my books into movies. So it goes on and on.

How did I go from homeless, poverty to this luxurious lifestyle? And I would say that the #1 reason would be following my passion. I’ve always followed my excitement – my enthusiasm. This is much like Joseph Campbell saying “Follow your bliss.” I have really felt that that is the doorway to success. When you follow your passion, you follow your bliss, you follow your enthusiasm, you follow your heart, you’re following what seems to be your destiny.

And as you follow it, it seems like the road gets easier. The only time there’s bumps on the road is when you have inner beliefs that are still limiting you from enjoying it. And again, that’s when I would use tapping to get rid of any of the limiting beliefs about following your passion and living a life of gusto – of joy – of excitement.

Jessica Ortner: Great. Another one, in your book you talked about the shortcut to creating the life you want. And can you kind of tell what that is, if it’s possible to relate that to how EFT can be used in there.

Joe Vitale: That’s a great question. Thank you for bringing that up, because that’s a juicy one. In my book, The Attractor Factor, I say there’s actually a shortcut to being… remind me what I said…

Jessica Ortner: It is the shortcut to creating the life you want.

Joe Vitale: Ah. In my book, The Attractor Factor, I talk about a shortcut to creating the life you really want.

· You don’t need 5 steps.
· You don’t need a whole lot of seminars.
· You don’t need a whole lot of books.
· You don’t need a whole lot of courses.

And the really simplified version of having whatever you want in life is to be happy now. Now this is earth-shaking. It’s profound because most of us hinge our happiness on something that we want down the road.

· When we get the car…
· or when we get the house…
· when we get the money…
· when we get the job…
· when we get the body of our dreams
· when we get the relationship…

Fill in the blank. Then we’ll be happy. And the great irony, the great joke is that when you get there, you’ll want something else. And you’re going to go, “Okay, as soon as I get the next car… the next house… blah, blah, blah… I’ll be happy.

And what I’ve found is that the shortcut is to be happy now. And you don’t need anything to be happy now. We use happiness as a whip to drive ourselves on. We think we’ll be unhappy until we get whatever we want, then we’ll be happy. So we’re using unhappiness as a motivator.

You don’t have to do that. I have found that if I use tapping, if I use EFT, I can realize that, “Oh yeah. I can be happy right now.” If I feel some sort of frustration in this moment, some sort of stress in this moment, some anger in this moment, something that’s keeping me from being happy right now, I can begin by saying, “Even though I’m angry right now, I deeply love, accept, and forgive myself. Even though I’m angry right now or frustrated right now…” whatever the word is that captures the essence of the feeling that’s blocking me from being here. Now. And happy. I tap it away and guess what? I’ve created this shortcut to what I ultimately want in my life… happiness.

And it’s right here.

Jessica Ortner: Next question is: The statement that you were saying, “Even though I have this feeling I deeply and completely accept myself…” why do you believe it’s such a powerful statement and that helps people release emotions?

Joe Vitale: I think the statement that “Even though I have this…” fill in the blank “problem, I deeply love, accept and forgive myself” while tapping right here is the single-most powerful thing you can do in my opinion when it comes to tapping. I don’t even have to go through all the rest of the points if I just do this one. Because what’s happening here is first of all, I focused on the problem and I think, just knowing what the problem is, admitting it, getting the secret out… getting it out of myself is a very therapeutic thing to do.

Actually it was Freud, I’ll paraphrase him who said the way to healing is to have no secrets. No secrets. So by tapping on that problem, that feeling that I have, I’m speaking it. So I’m releasing that secret. Then the other part of this which is really crucial is “I deeply love, accept and forgive myself.” This puts me back at a place of peace.

I have often told people, especially when they tell me they have a fear of failure… I’ve often told people, “Look, I’ve tried things that have failed. I’ve tried things that I was terrified of doing before I went out and done it. And I would always say, if this doesn’t work, when I come back to my room at night, can I tell myself that I still love myself?” And when I can say, “Yes.” And I can always say, “Yes” I can forgive myself. I can love myself. I am at a place of peace and power that allows me to do whatever I can imagine.

So I find this one statement alone to be one of the most powerful in cleansing and clearing. And a lot of it has to do with just being willing to love yourself no matter what’s going on in this moment.

Jessica Ortner: Great. I thought you didn’t have anything to say about EFT.

Joe Vitale: You know, I had a guy come here yesterday, he wanted to make a DVD on The Secret to Productivity. And really, I had nothing to say. I had nothing to say. He was supposed to do the work before and I cancelled it because I had nothing to say. And I actually had to go through the…“Even though I have nothing to say on the secret of productivity, I deeply love, accept and forgive myself.” So he comes out here yesterday. He sets up the camera and turns it on and 47 minutes later, we’re done. And he said, “That’s stunning. That’s perfect. I’m not even going to edit it.”

And I’m thinking, “I didn’t have anything to say.”

Jessica Ortner: That’s great.

Nicholas Polizzi: I’ve got a couple of questions that are out of left field. I had no idea about the obesity thing. There are so many things that you said that are so crucial for us to have right now.

Joe Vitale: Well, I even do the tapping when I – this is still running right?

Jessica Ortner: (Simultaneous with Nicholas Polizzi) Yes.

Joe Vitale: So I’m just going to talk here.

Nicholas Polizzi: You want to do the tapping points? You can do the tapping points if you want.

Joe Vitale: This is one of the things I was nervous about is that I’m not a specialist in this so I’ve adapted my own way of doing the energy tapping. And for me, for example, I was just going to explain that when I go to eat, I often don’t know what to eat because I’ve become almost paranoid about food because I’ve gone into these fitness contests. I’m at that place where I don’t really know what’s right for my body. So I’ll sit there when there’s a menu in front of me and I’ll go, “Okay, even though I don’t know what to eat right now, I deeply love, accept and forgive myself.”

And this I can do in public. Nobody’s looking. Now I can still do the rest of the points in my imagination. So this is important to understand. Because everybody thinks you have to go ahead and tap, “Even though I don’t know what to eat right now… even though I don’t know what to eat right now… I don’t know what to eat right now… I don’t know what to eat right now… I don’t know what to eat right now.. I don’t know what to eat right now… I don’t know what to eat right now…” and I end up over here “I don’t know what to eat right now.” I’m releasing all of that.

When you’ve done this enough, you can visualize doing it. And I will just rub my hand while I’m visualizing tapping on all these points. I, again, end up in a place of peace where I’m at the moment. I’m happy in the moment. I am much clearer about what my choices are and I choose. It comes naturally.

I think this is one of the greatest gifts from the whole EFT, the whole tapping movement, it’s that you end up in a place of natural movement in your life. You don’t really have to think about a lot of the decisions you might have thought about before. Because you’re at this place where you just do what’s right for you because the interference from knowing right for you has been dissolved. That’s one of the most beautiful things with EFT.

Nicholas Polizzi: Can you talk a little bit about the fear that can go through somebody’s mind. Because we all know. We’ve all been in public speaking situations before. Can you just talk a little bit about the fear, the common fears that people go through and then how EFT has helped you alleviate that? You already did it to a degree, but can you go a little bit further…

Joe Vitale: With the speaking?

Nicholas Polizzi: Because everybody’s been in that dark place of like, “Oh my God… I don’t want. I don’t want…”

Joe Vitale: Speaking is one of the most terrifying things for anybody to do. It’s rated as #1 on the scale of terrifying things, all above going into war…going into any battle, divorces, whatever it happens to be. Speaking is terrifying.

And for me, it was paralyzing. It’s one of those things where when I even thought about it, I was terrified because I’d feel it in my gut. Everything would be turning. I’d feel my hands start to sweat. I’d feel the tension in my head. And I would start imagining the worst. And what would the worst be for me? I’d be standing up there in front of a thousand people… five thousand people and I’d choke. I can’t think of what to say. And that is terrifying. It’s paralyzing.

When I went on the CNN Larry King show the second time, I knew I was going live and I was going one on one with Larry King. It brought up a lot of fears. I went into that hotel room and I remember wanting to chew the curtains because I was just so afraid. And what I was imaging is that,

· “What if I go on Larry King and I choke?
· I can’t think of what to say?
· Or he asks me a question and I don’t have an answer for him?
· What if I stammer?
· What if I just go berserk?
· What if I sit there like an idiot?

And this is live and the whole world is watching it.” And I’m thinking to myself, “This is the fear of public speaking.” So I kind of condensed all of the feeling even down to a phrase… “Even though I’m terrified of going on Larry King tonight because I may choke” which seemed to be the most important thing or the most fearful thing for me… “I deeply love, accept, and forgive myself.” And I went through tapping all of those points in the hotel room. I got up and I shook off the energy that was still going through my body, and I was so relaxed that by the time I got on Larry King that night, they could not turn me off.

You know, after being interviewed with him for a few minutes, they wanted me out of the chair and it’s like, “I’m not done. I have more to say. I’m here. Larry’s here. I’m here. This is live. I’m ready to keep going.” So the point was that I was able to dilute, dissolve, and release this fear, this terror of speaking. I know what that’s like. I’ve gone through it. I know that there are people still afraid of speaking.

I would encourage them to go to a Toast Masters to a Rotary so they can bring up the fear and just before going on, while they feel the fear, go through…”Even though I’m afraid of speaking right here in this little group for Toast Masters… I deeply love, accept, and forgive myself.” And go through the tapping on that. By doing that, you release the fear of public speaking and then you’re empowered to go out there and give your message to the world.

Jessica Ortner: When you’re scared of public speaking, a lot of times the first thing people do is they kind of have that war inside their head where they try and figure out….. you know what I mean – where they try to like fight with positive thinking and say something how you felt like EFT was kind of different in that sense.

Joe Vitale: Yeah. Okay. When people start feeling the fear of public speaking or basically the fear of anything, they have a bunch of different tools that they can use, and one of them is self-talk. What happens is that people are realizing inside their brain that they’re talking to themselves about what they want to do. They want to go and give a great performance as a speaker, but they’re also hearing this devilish little voice that’s saying, “What if I choke?” “What if I don’t do well?” “What if I faint?” “What if I pass out?” “What if I throw up?”

So you have this little war of dialogue going on inside of your brain. That is not very pleasant. It is not very productive. And what I have found by using EFT is that I can just cut through all of that. And I can even say, if I notice that there is this war of thoughts in my head, I can say, “Even though I have this war of thoughts in my head right now, I deeply love, accept, and forgive myself…” diluting that as well.

Because again, when you do this, you end up at this place of clarity, of peace. Then the only thought you have up there is, “I think I’m going to do great.” “I think it’s going to be fine.” And if something surfaces because you may have drudged up some quicksand and if something else comes up from the deep that says, “Well, what if you’re wrong?” Well, “even though I feel I may be wrong, I deeply love, accept, and forgive myself…” and you dilute the negative self-talk.

I have found EFT to be a great way to take a sword and cut through the negativity in your brain.

Nicholas Polizzi: Somebody who hadn’t tried it yet and if you were giving advice to somebody who hadn’t tried it yet, what would you say?

Joe Vitale: I often tell people about EFT and often they’ve never heard of it at all. They don’t know what tapping is. They don’t know what Emotional Freedom Technique is. They don’t know what Thought Field Therapy, Roger Callahan. They don’t even know what acupuncture is. But I’ll try to explain it to them by saying that your body is an energy system.

And that your body and mind are one. I tell people that your mind is not just in your brain… that your mind, your brain’s up in your skull, but your mind is actually throughout your body.

And I’ve said that with EFT you actually open up the energy centres that are traveling, letting the energy go through your body,

· it can help you feel happier.
· It can help you release stress.
· It can help you release anger, frustration,
· It can help you release whatever you’re feeling in the moment.

And then I very quickly just walk them through a shorthand version of it. And again, I’ll say, “What’s going on for you right now?” And they might say that they’re confused. They don’t understand what I’m talking about. Perfect. Nice and simple thing to begin with… “Even though I’m confused, I deeply love, accept and forgive myself.” And I don’t usually explain what that statement means because I just want them to do it. And I’ll ask them, “How do you feel at this point?” Because I’ve learned that just doing that one thing here, they feel a little bit more relaxed.

And I’ll say, “Okay, let’s go through the rest of the points.” And the way that I do the points, it would be, “Even though I’m confused, I deeply love, accept, and forgive myself.” I’ll say, “Confused” – just using the key word on my forehead. Then I’ll do it here. “confused.” Here “Confused.” “confused.” “Confused.” “confused” “confused.” And I usually do it here “confused.” I usually stop there. What I will often, sometimes rub right in here while I’m saying “confused” and by then I’m really relaxed.

So I walk people through that and I’ve actually done it in front of a seminar where I was telling people, I believe it was about the fear of public speaking. Because I was telling them about speaking and about how I used to be afraid and now they can’t shut me up and I said, “This is what I’m doing.” And I said, “Whatever’s going on for you right now, you can follow this very simple step and go even though I’m confused… even though whatever it happens to be.”

So I talk about it on a kindergarten level. And if they get more interested, I’ll talk about the Chinese acupuncture and how there’s all these thousands of points on our body. I actually have a doll in my office, it’s one of those two-foot meridian point dolls from China. And I’ve never been able to memorize all those points. But the point being… the idea is that all of those points need to be open and that your body and mind that they are representing… that when they’re open, man… life works and you’re happy.

Nicholas Polizzi: Can you give us a two or three sentence description if somebody was going to ask you: What is EFT? What is EFT?

Joe Vitale: Okay. My definition of EFT – it’s psychological acupuncture. I tell people that just like acupuncture will put needles in different parts of your body to help resolve a headache, a back ache, people go through acupuncture and still have operations because those needles are placed in the right place. That psychological acupuncture is when you’re tapping on certain parts of your body to help you feel better – to help you think better – to help you release stress. So I call it psychological acupuncture or psychological acutapping.

Jessica Ortner: That’s great. And for someone who wants to start using tapping for abundance right away, they just watched the video… What’s the first step that they should take?

Joe Vitale: Yeah. That’s a great question. You know, when somebody wants to bring abundance into their lives and they’re wondering: What’s the first thing to tap on? I’d say something like, “I deserve wealth.” “Even though I don’t know how to achieve wealth I deserve wealth… Even though I don’t know how to achieve wealth, I deeply love, accept, and forgive myself.”

I think deservingness has a whole lot to do with wealth. I’ve learned that people have thresholds of deservingness within themselves. They only allow so much into their lives and then they say, “I’ll never get a raise.” “My products don’t work.” “My business isn’t bringing in any income” And it’s not the raise, the job, the product, the income… what it is is you.

So your deservingness level often happens to be raised for you to have more income, more abundance coming into your life. So I think beginning with deservingness. And if there’s an issue saying, “Well, I don’t deserve more.” Or, “I don’t know how the money’s going to come…” which are all beliefs, I’d tap those away.

Jessica Ortner: That’s great. And what’s… Someone’s trying EFT again for the very first time, do you have a piece of advice to give them before you start. Something to maybe keep in mind?

Joe Vitale: Well, what I love is that, you know, if somebody is trying EFT for the very first time, I tell them, use it on everything. And I mean that in the most literal way. Use it on everything.

· So if you don’t know what to do…
· you’re angry in traffic…
· you can’t go to sleep at night…
· you have a fear of speaking…
· you notice a belief…

I don’t care what it is. Whatever comes up, you can tap it away. So I tell people, use it on everything.

Jessica Ortner: Great.

Nicholas Polizzi: That’s awesome. Some people think that fear is a natural thing that is productive and is something that you need to keep in order to survive and avoid problems and death and avoid obstacles. What do you say to something like that? If somebody says, “Hey, listen – if I tap away my fears, I’m going to be driving blind?

Joe Vitale: A lot of people have misconceptions about fear. They think that if they tap away all their fear that they’re going to walk into traffic… they’re going to walk off of a building… they’re going to end up living on the beach… that they’re going to take away all of their safety mechanism. And that’s not true at all.

In fact that’s something that can be tapped away. “Even though I’m afraid that if I had no fear, I’m going to walk into walls, I deeply love, accept, and forgive myself.” But obviously those are just fears. Those are beliefs themselves that can be tapped away.

My experience has been that when you release all of your fears, you’re in this natural state of being. It does not take away your brainpower. You still think for yourself. You’re not going to walk into traffic. You’re not going to walk off of a building.

· You’re going to actually increase your desire to do the things that are good for you because you’re coming from this right place of being within yourself.
· You have this clarity of awareness.
· You’re more in tune with the Divine.
· You’re more in tune with your passion.
· You’re more in tune with your calling – I guess I would say.

But it doesn’t take away your reasoning abilities at all.

Jessica Ortner: Great. Is there something that you usually say to someone who’s kind of… like, you’re with a friend and you’re talking about EFT and they’re like, “Ahhh, I don’t really believe in that.” What’s usually the response to that?

Joe Vitale: If I’m with somebody and they say they don’t believe in what I’ve just described. They don’t believe in EFT. They don’t believe in tapping. I’m okay with that because I don’t try and sell anybody. I’m not trying to be an evangelist here and cause a movement. But I might say something like, “That’s cool. You know, the next time you feel upset, why don’t you try a little tapping. It’ll only take a minute, three minutes at the top. You know, and see how you feel.” And I leave it at that because I’ve also – you know I’m a marketing guy – I also know that if I try to go with a full frontal assault and persuade them to go and do this, they’re going to resist it.

But if I just lay it out on the table and say, “Hey look, this is what I do. This is what I’ve done to lose weight. This is what I’ve done to get over the fear of speaking.” And I’ll say, “If you have a problem, something surfaces in your life… you’re feeling stressed or whatever, try it on it. Just see what it feels like.” And I leave it at that.

Nicholas Polizzi: What are some of the big things that you’ve seen EFT alleviate? Are there some pretty miraculous stories?

Joe Vitale: You know Gary Craig, right? (Gary Craig is the founder of the EFT-Technique). Because he’s the guy who seems to be inventorying all the big stories and I don’t think I’m as up to date on all the things that are happening. But occasionally I’ll hear about people using EFT for even though from of course money – because I’m an entrepreneur and I did the whole course with Brad Yates called Money Beyond Belief. So they tap away their concerns about money and suddenly their business is getting better or they’re making a lot of sales.

But I also hear a lot of things going on in health. I hear people who had migraines almost all of their life suddenly don’t have migraines anymore, which to me is pretty miraculous. And they’re doing this, they’re resolving this because of the tapping. And then I hear other health things going on. People who have cancer…. People who have some life threatening diseases are able to handle it better and able to actually get to a point of recovery, actually miraculous remission by doing the tapping. But the tapping seems to help them from a psychological standpoint to be empowered to do whatever that needs to be done to help them through.

I don’t think I’m as up to date on other people and what they’re doing with it.

Jessica Ortner: You might actually get this question in response to The Secret. Do you believe that there is a danger because a lot of people talk about the danger of EFT where it can be denial of not getting … or The Secret … About not being honest?

Joe Vitale: I understand what you’re talking about. Let me… I’ll see what I can say here. Yeah. There are some people who have these – to me – invalid fears, including one where they say, “If I do EFT on my health problem” for example, “I’m not going to go and get treatment.” And that to me says sounds like a limitation. It sounds like a fear-based belief. It is not a fact. In my experience when somebody does EFT on their health problem, they’re at a better place of clarity to know what to do next. And it doesn’t mean they’re going to dismiss treatment. They’re going to consider treatment and if it’s right for them, then they’re going to go through it.

Now let me confess something to you. I fought with the idea that I had cancer for the first 3 months of this year. At the end of January, I went for an emergency appendectomy. When they did the appendectomy, they had done a CT scan and they found swollen lymph nodes in my chest. The doctor came in and told me about it. He did it as if it was a death sentence, saying, “We don’t know for sure what they are, but it could be lymphoma.” And then I’m sent to cancer specialists. I’m told they want to do a biopsy. I’m tapping away through all of this because here I am an otherwise very healthy man who just had to have his appendix pulled out and along the way they find out about possible lymphoma.

So I’m doing everything I can to be at a place of peace. In other words, I’m taking away this stress that might cause me to make decisions that aren’t right for me. As I take away the stress, I start realizing that I have a lot of opportunities. I have a lot of alternatives. I know alternative healers. I know alternative medicine people. I know about acupuncture. I know about herbs. I know about all these different resources. I said, “You know what, I’m not going to do a biopsy” because I was clear enough to do research on it.

In other words, from a fear-based motivation, I might have gone ahead and said, “Yeah, do the biopsy. Go ahead and take care of that.” And biopsies can actually be dangerous depending on your situation. In mine they were talking about taking a sample close to my heart and close to my lungs and if they missed, it could be deadly. Besides that, when they take a sample of a possible tumour, it breaks up, it can travel to a different part of your body. The doctors didn’t tell me this. By doing the tapping, I got to a place of peace and clarity so I did my own research. In doing my own research, I thought, “That’s not what I want to do. I’m going to try this alternative stuff.” So I did and three months later when I went in for another CT scan, they said, you are completely fine.

So, I say that the tapping helps you be clear about your choices. You will not automatically dismiss one. What you’re going to do is consider it and you’ll consider your alternatives and you’ll make an empowered decision. But it’s fear to say, “Oh, if I do tapping, I’m not going to go for treatment.” You’re going to do whatever it takes to get well if you’re not feeling well if you do the tapping to be at a place of clarity.

Jessica Ortner: That’s great. How about in regards to EFT, do you feel like EFT helps connect you to “The Divine?”

Nicholas Polizzi: Could you say the same thing for EFT?

Joe Vitale: Yeah. I would definitely say that EFT helps connect you to the Divine.And the reason it helps connect you to the Divine is because it’s taking away, it’s helping you release the blocks that are in the way of you experiencing the Divine blessing you right now. And that might be the most profound statement you can say about EFT.

Because it’s not just

helping you on a stress level,
helping you on a personal accomplishment level,
helping you on a practical level, but
it’s helping you realize that you and the Divine are actually one –
and the only thing that blocks you from feeling that are these blockages within you
that EFT helps you release.

Release them, you experience the Divine in your life in this moment.
Then you’ll live a life of bliss, of wonder, of amazement.
That is the ultimate spiritual experience.

It’s important to understand that as we live in our world, we’re always going to have challenges. Dr. Hew Len, the therapist that I wrote about in Zero Limits says that we’re always going to have problems. This is the nature of the human experience. What you do about them, however, is up to you. EFT is here as a tool for you to use no matter what services, what problems, what challenge.

Sometimes people will say, “Well, I used it on the fear of public speaking, but I went and gave another speech recently and I was afraid again.” And I would say that there are different levels that keep coming up. You have a lot of beliefs that are operating in your system, most of which you’re not aware of. So you might have caught a belief that said something like, “I’m afraid I’m going to choke when I speak tonight.” So you went through that one. But the next time you go to speak, there might have been a different belief that surfaces. That one is gone. The one that you just tapped on is already gone, but a new belief may surface. So you go ahead and do it on that belief.

My point is that as things surface in life that keep you from being happy in this moment, at peace in this moment… you do EFT. That will dissolve, but a sister thought, a different root to the thought, a different branch to that thought you just cleaned may surface. When it does, tap it away… It’s as simple as that.